


Tommy Knows: "Lone Gunmen"

by ThomE_Gemcity_06



Series: Eloquence of a Secret [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, Episode: s01e03 - Lone Gunmen, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post canon-typical violence, Secrets, Tommy Knows!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 02:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10981509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThomE_Gemcity_06/pseuds/ThomE_Gemcity_06
Summary: Tommy sees first-hand the trauma of Oliver putting on the Hood.





	Tommy Knows: "Lone Gunmen"

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow, its episodes or its characters.  
> Tag: Season 1, Episode 3 - "Lone Gunmen"

**aRRoW**

"You know, I was pretty dubious about this place at first." Tommy said as he spotted Oliver's bare back as he returned to, you guessed it, the lair. "I'm mean, I was pretty spot on with the whole disused Queen warehouse and I was just talking out of my as-- Jesus! Are you sewing up a bullet wound?!" He shouted, coming full circle and actually seeing what his friend was up to at his return from beating the crap out of a listed name.

"Calm down!" Oliver ordered in his Hood-voice. "It's just a graze."

"Just a gr--" he shook his head, looking a little green as he watched Oliver with his face half-turned away. But it was like a car wreck, grotesque, yet he could turn his gaze way. "You're stitching up yourself. You do that often? And how do you even know how to do that?"

"I've been lucky so far," Oliver cut the thread. "See? Nothing to it." He hopped from the table and his knees nearly went out from under him.

Tommy caught him by the arm. "I thought you said it was just a graze?!"

"It is." Oliver stumbled to the adjacent table where the used supplies were. "Poison!"

"P--!" Oliver pulled him in another direction, Tommy his main support. The brunette watched him put something gross looking in his mouth and swallow. "What was th--" Oliver's sudden dead weight dragged him down. Oliver thumped to the floor, Tommy nearly coming down on top of him. "Oliver?" he shook the man. "Oliver?!" he shouted, but he got no response. "What do I do?" he muttered. "What do I do?!"

He didn't even know if his best-friend was alive or dead.

**...**

It was early the next morning when Oliver opened his eyes and sat up, like he was waking from nothing more than a hangover. Tommy himself didn't look too fresh; having camped out next to Oliver all night, not sleeping, worrying his heart weak, helpless but hopeful when Oliver's chest continued to rise and fall.

"Tommy, you okay?" he croaked as he saw the state of his friend.

"Me?" Tommy gave a humourless laugh as he carded fingers through his lank hair. "I should be asking you that. You said poison and then went down. I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do. I almost cracked and gave in five-hundred times to calling an ambulance or _somebody._ Are _you_ okay?" he quickly scrambled to his feet and helped pull Oliver to his own.

"Feeling great." He cleared his throat and checked his watch. "We got some time." He pulled out the chair at his makeshift computer bay and sat heavily. "Let's find out who this bastard is that almost killed me."

"Just like that, right back into it?" Tommy sat heavily in a spare chair next to him. "Like you really almost just didn't die? Shouldn't you get checked out at the hospital?"

"And say what?" Oliver said, his attention focused on the screen. "It's fine, I took some medicine."

"That stuff you swallowed before you passed out?" Tommy asked.

Oliver nodded. "It comes in pretty handy."

"Not too handy," Tommy hoped. "A very rare occurrence is more than I'm comfortable with to need that stuff already."

**X**

"What do you think?" Oliver asked, his arms wide.

"Uh," Tommy said unintelligibly, looking around the disused foundry.

"For a nightclub," he explained.

"Are we having a mid-life crisis, buddy?" Tommy asked with concern. "Is this because of what I told you before about a certain lawyer after that thing?" he shot a glance at Diggle.

"No." Oliver shot him a glower. "It was weird and awkward and hurt, I'll admit, but I told you already. It's fine."

Tommy still didn't look sure. It was after Oliver’s near-death by poison-bullet that Tommy, exhausted and not thinking straight, decided to confess his own heavy secret to the archer about his feelings for Laurel and what happened between them when Oliver had been presumed dead. The blond’s reaction was more tame than he was expecting, but he was still convinced it was because the poison-hangover and not his friend's true feelings on the matter.

"So...?" Tommy wondered next. "You hip-check managing QC so you can, what? run a night club?" Oliver nodded. Tommy pointed. "Mid-life crisis!" he declared.

"Cut that out." Oliver gave him a playful shove. "I'm serious."

"You're serious." Tommy repeated. "You're going to run a nightclub. What exactly do you know about running a nightclub?"

Oliver's eyes flickered upwards briefly in thought. "Not a damn thing. But, I mean, it can't be that hard, right? Alcohol and music," he shrugged, "Easy."

Tommy shook his head and addressed his friend's bodyguard (which was ironic), "You're a sane man, right, Diggle? Can you please talk some sense into my man?"

"It's okay, Diggle." Oliver said. "I want your honest opinion."

Diggle licked his lips. "Alright, then. This is the Glades, your rich friends aren't going to come here."

"I'm Oliver Queen. People will stand in the street for three hours, just so they can tweet about it. And when they do get in, they won't be leaving with full pockets."

"Money that won't be going into anyone's pockets but your own."

"Gentrification--" he started reasonably.

"Wondered when we'd get to that." He commented drily. "The white knight swooping in to save the disenfranchised—all by his lonesome without anyone’s help."

"Not alone," Oliver corrected. "I got Tommy." He threw a thumb at his friend.

"Thanks," Tommy said in sarcasm. "That's what I'm here for—moral support." Diggle made a sound of amusement at that, but he backed off. "Well, you were no help." Tommy told Diggle. He turned to Oliver, "Alright, if you're going to go through with this, then what's more important than scoping out your future competition. Max Fuller just open some sleazy place--"

"No, Tommy. No way. If he sees me, he'll kill me. I slept with his fiancée," Oliver tried to divert. "At the wedding reception."

But Tommy was having none of it. "It'll be fine. Who holds a grudge that long anyways? It's not like they got married." He clapped his hands and grinned. "We are going out tonight and drinks are not optional, my friend!"

**...**

"You pulled your punches." Tommy complained, gladly taking the bag of ice cubes Diggle dropped at the table. He did not need a swollen face. "I can tell because my face hurts."

"You're the one who jumped in-between." Oliver reminded him. "And how would it look if I took out all three of them without breaking a sweat?"

"Yeah, yeah. My face still doesn't agree." Tommy said. "And what about the other thing...s?"

"You mean Thea and Laurel?" Oliver said plainly. Tommy gave a helpless shrug. "It's... difficult."

"That's just another none answer for complicated."

"It _is_ complicated." Oliver retorted.

"Yeah," he groaned. "Doesn't mean it's not annoying every time you say it. You're also not helping your situation with this pretend playboy crap. You can't preach to Thea about how she's acting when we were even worse at her age, and how you're pretending to be now. It's very hypercritical. And Laurel... that's like a minefield where you're concerned; step carefully 'cause unlike me, she could probably kick your ass."

Oliver gave him a faint smile at that when his cell rang and he answered it in Russian.

Tommy raised a brow; this wasn't the first time his friend had spoken Russian either. "Did a Rosetta Stone wash up on that island of yours, or what?"

"Something like that. I have to take this."

"Go right ahead." Tommy waved a hand. "Don't mind me. It's not like I speak Russian."

Oliver flashed him a complicated look and went back to his phone conversation. When Oliver finally hung up from his brisk conversation, or at least it sounded that way to Tommy in Russian, he had on a look the brunette was coming to recognizes as his Hood-look.

"Duty calls, huh?" Oliver nodded. "Want me to distract your shadow so you can make a break for it? Sidekick’s gotta earn his keep," he flashed Oliver a grin and slid from the booth. "Don't get shot again, huh?" he murmured quietly, knocking on the table before he joined the Diggles.

**X**

"What'd you bring him here for?!" Tommy wondered with panic as Oliver hefted a disoriented, senseless Diggle onto the table. He'd been over at Laurel's with a gift of Chinese food, when he'd gotten a text from Oliver; so he cut his night short and rushed over to the lair. But he had no idea exactly what he was supposed to be doing now that he was actually here. "Why didn't you take him to a hospital?"

"Deadshot hit him." Oliver quickly opened his secret Chinese crate and pulled out the bag of his special medicine. He started to grind and mix it up. "The poison had a direct line to his bloodstream. There wasn't time to get him to the hospital; he'll die before they could fix it."

Tommy tentatively approached. There was definitely a lot of blood that should be on the inside instead of out; he didn't have to be a doctor to know that. Was he going to bleed out before the poison killed him. Pressure, right? Isn't that what they say? He quickly pulled off his sweater and bunched it up. "Oh, god." He cringed as he pressed it down and Diggle let out a pained groan.

The Oliver was on the other side of the table, hand at the nape of Diggle's head, cup of herb mixture at his lips. Once he managed to get Diggle to finish it off, he quickly grabbed his first aid supplies.

"Let me see," he said.

Tommy backed off, bloodied sweater in his bloody hands. He watched as Oliver cleaned, then patched the bodyguard up.

"How long is he going to be out?" Tommy asked, sitting heavily in a chair, staring. Watching Oliver after the fact on his own wound was one thing, but this was completely another. His hands were covered in someone else’s blood—literally.

"Shouldn't be lo--"

"Oh, shit." Tommy uttered as Diggle came-to.

**aRROW**

**Author's Note:**

> **DELETED TEXT:**
> 
> After Oliver had almost died for the poison-bullet, the dark-haired man, in his great wisdom, exhausted and not in a clear mind, had decided it was a great idea to get some heavy things off his chest—that being Laurel. Oliver's reaction was more tame than Tommy had expected, but that could also have been because he had been after-poison-hungover. So when Oliver had invited him along for this ride, he was relieved at Diggle's presence. "Not to sound judgey... but I don't want to be included in your sex dungeon, thank you very much."  
>  Diggle made a chuff of mild amusement from near the door.  
> Oliver glared. "A night club, Tommy."  
> "You hip-checked running QC so you could own a night club?" he asked. Oliver made an impatient hand gesture at him. "Alright," he rolled his eyes. "Omitting several things," Tommy told him pointedly, aware of Diggle's presence, "What the hell do you know about running a club?"  
> "Not a damn thing." Oliver chuckled. "But I know very well how to participate at a night club. It can't be that much hard or different."  
> Tommy shook his head in good humour.


End file.
